'This Week' Transcript: Timothy Geithner

AMANPOUR: Up next, Tea Party nation. Sarah Palin and Donald
Trump rallying the faithful across the country this weekend. The
movement has already taken Congress by storm and changed the
conversation here in Washington. We've gathered a group of Tea Party
freshmen to ask whether they've only just began the fight.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SARAH PALIN, FORMER ALASKA GOVERNOR: We didn't elect you to just
stand back and watch Obama redistribute those deck chairs. What we
need is for you to stand up, GOP, and fight.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: Sarah Palin at a Tea Party rally in Wisconsin this
weekend. Her message to the movement's representatives in Congress,
don't sell out your principles. Those principles -- small government,
big cuts -- are setting the agenda in Washington these days.

Tea is the drink of choice on Capitol Hill and as John Donvan
tells us, it may be the flavor of the month at the White House too.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN DONVAN, ABC: Tea? No, that would be water, and there you
have beer, champagne, soda pop, a nice, cold smoothie, a shot of
orange juice, and yes, OK, he also drinks tea. In fact, it seems he
has had to swallow quite a bit lately. So much so, that this week,
when the president at last put forth a budget proposal of his own, it
sounded somewhat tea-stained in places.

OBAMA: We have to live within our means. We have to reduce our
deficit.

DONVAN: A message not at all like the theme he rode into office.
Remember?

OBAMA: I do believe the government should do that which we
cannot do for ourselves. That's why I'm going to create a $25 billion
fund to help states and local governments pay for health care, pay for
education.

I do think it's important for the federal government to step up.

DONVAN: But then some new folks came to Washington, and they
have really changed the conversation. The 59 members of Congress
sworn in this season who are not only Republicans, but who are also
marching behind this, and the movement that has claimed it for itself,
the Tea Party, which wants smaller government and lower taxes, whose
supporters a mere two years ago were only really just getting
acquainted with each other when they took to the streets. A lot of
folks who didn't do politics before, and now some of them are in
politics.

He owned a pizza parlor. He's a dentist from Washington state.
A funeral director from Florida. A nurse. And he, a car salesman
from California.

They came in saying they wanted to change things. Wait, that was
his line.

OBAMA: That's what change is.

DONVAN: But the Tea Party folks may, may have a better shot at
that, because their obvious distaste for the politics of compromise --
that is what changed the conversation, and almost shut the government.
And yet when a deal was reached that cut the budget by $38.5 billion,
which is historic, they had wanted 100 billion. That's why many of
them defied their own Republican House Speaker John Boehner, voting
against a deal that he reached so that then he needed a lot of
Democratic votes to pass it, raising the question who is leading whom?
They of course are still going to want big tax cuts, and that's going
to be a fight, because he also talked this week about government that
is worth saving. And said.

OBAMA: There's nothing serious about a plan that claims to
reduce the deficit by spending a trillion dollars on tax cuts for
millionaires and billionaires.